Photo Essay: Our Rainbow Families

A Photo Essay by Heidi Sakallah

TaQuoia Hammick & Sophia Deady – Non-Binary (TaQuoia) & Cisgender Female

Tell Us about your Family:

TaQuoia (they/them) is a mental health therapist who works with children is passionate about serving LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities. Sophia is a stay at home parent who recently completed her masters in biomedical sciences, with a focus on improving the accessibility of gender affirming care.

We both always knew we wanted kids and were so excited to welcome our little one at the end of 2021. Z is fifteen months old, extremely energetic and goofy, and absolutely loves exploring the world. As a family we are very playful and love spending time outside, dancing, swimming and being creative. The fourth member of our family and Z’s best friend is Hamilton, a one eyed pug.

Please Briefly Explain Why You Want To Participate In This Model Call:

We think it would be a really fun experience! We also want to help increase representation of BIPOC and multiracial queer families. A lot of the media we’ve observed around queerness and particularly queer families has been very white dominated and we’d love to do our part to help everyone feel included and represented.

Steph Feakes-Young & Nora Young – Cisgender Female (Steph) & Transgender Female (Nora)

Tell Us about your Family:

My amazing wife came out as trans almost a year and a half ago. We have two energetic and amazing kiddos who are 6 and 3. My wife is a software engineer manager, and I teach high school special education in Bloomington Public Schools

Please Briefly Explain Why You Want To Participate In This Model Call:

Since coming out, my wife has been able to finally take pictures as herself, and the process is now fun and joyful! (Or at least as fun as it can be while wrangling two small children!) We also don’t often see many families that look like ours, and would love to share our happiness with others!

Robbin & Andre Reed – gender agnostic/beyond-binary femme (Robbin) & Transgender Male (Andre)

Tell Us about your Family:

We had our first baby, Avery, a little over a year ago. We’re a couple of performers (Andre is Andre 1000, a drag king in Minneapolis and Robbin is The Lady Wolf, a Minneapolis Burlesque Performer), we have had the best time raising and loving on Avery and continuing to keep a significant presence in the queer community and haven’t had time to enjoy professional photographs of our family! We would LOVE to be considered!

Please Briefly Explain Why You Want To Participate In This Model Call:

As I said, we’re very busy and haven’t had the chance to get any fun family photos done by a professional! Which is something that’s really important to us! We also don’t necessarily have the money to do a full photoshoot with any of the photographers we usually work with and would love to work with someone new!

Heidi & Julia Hanson – 2 Cisgender Females

Tell Us about your Family:

Our family is 3 humans and two furry pals. We live in the Twin Cities and enjoy everything here from the nature to the night life. We care deeply about the environment, our friends, family, and all living things.

Please Briefly Explain Why You Want To Participate In This Model Call:

We are down for any opportunity that helps queer visibility.

Tony & Danny Porter – 2 Cisgender Males

Tell Us about your Family:

My husband Dan and I have adopted 3 children over the past 10 years from the foster care system. We have a 21 year old son, Leon, adopted at age 11, 10 year old son named Leland, adopted at 2, and our newest family member, Renji, age 7, was just adopted this past year. We are a very active family that loves to travel and spend time outdoors. We are also very active in the LGBTQ+ community as well as the adoption and children’s mental health communities. Dan works as a school social worker and child therapist and I work as a Family Support Specialist for the Ramsey County Children’s Mental Health Collaborative. Dan and I have been married for almost 9 years.

Please Briefly Explain Why You Want To Participate In This Model Call:

My husband and I both think it is very important for our children to see other families similar to ours, with 2 parents of the same gender, or gender diverse, and we believe that representation matters, and part of that representation is seeing yourself (or in this case, families like ours) in various venues/settings, whether it be in movies or TV shows, magazines/ads, etc., and we feel that it is important to all other people (non-LGBTQ+ families) to see families like ours as well. We celebrate who we are as a family every day and would like to share our families joy with readers of Lavender Magazine.

Ellie & Kelsey Leonardsmith – 2 Cisgender Females

Tell Us about your Family:

Ellie is a Community Organizer and Kelsey is a Family Doctor specializing in Trans care for youth. Our kiddos are Gray (10), North (5), and Marigold (1). Ellie carried the first two and Kelsey carried the third. We love hiking, travel, art, music, and animals!

Please Briefly Explain Why You Want To Participate In This Model Call:

We haven’t done a photo session in over a year because it has been such a stressful year- new baby, moving houses, COVID and some other medical issues, plus workworkwork  But, we’re very comfortable having our photos taken, and would love to help out!

Jessica & Angie Siegel Sherer – 2 Cisgender Females

Tell Us about your Family:

My wife, Angie, and I have a beautiful 16 month old baby girl. She’s not a baby anymore but a runny, laughing toddler! We utilized a local fertility clinic and an unknown donor. My wife Angie owns, GayMortgage.com and is a home lender in Minneapolis although she does business in 47 states. Not to oversell her business but we saw a need for people to have an all inclusive, empathic lending experience. 

We are very active in our community. We try to volunteer when we can and host multiple events all year long. We are hosting an Earth Day Mississippi River cleanup on April 22nd. Would love to have you or anyone you know. It’s open to all! (Even if we aren’t chosen.)

While Angie works from home, the baby and I to get out of the house for music and mommy and me classes.

Angie is from Brooklyn Park and I’m from Illinois- we love MPLS and the people in the city. We love part time in Florida- but are coming back to our home in MPLS the first week of April.

Please Briefly Explain Why You Want To Participate In This Model Call:

We love Lavender Magazine and have done our own ads in it previously. We are all about informing the community that families are made up of all different types of people. The one thing that’s consistent is a family has love and that’s all that you need.